The January 2009 issue of U.K. Cosmopolitan includes an interview with Scarlett Johansson in which the blushing bride talks about her marriage to Ryan Reynolds and explains just what it is that the star of National Lampoon's Van Wilder has that you ain't got, chum. The British Cosmo reported that Johansson told them that "Ryan has a very romantic side. We both enjoy remembering little things that make us happy." And: "This is a very beautiful time for me. Getting married is a huge moment in anyone's life, and the few months leading up to it were a little crazy." Giggling girlishly, she also confided that she "has at no point granted U.K. Cosmopolitan an interview", and she has never discussed her personal relationships with the publication." Oops, no, that was Johansson's spokesman Marcel Pariseau, issuing a statement that the quotes were "wholly fabicated" and constituted an "obvious attempt...to gain monetarily by misinforming their readers." The eagle-eyed Perez Hilton, who gets on-line gossip brownie points for having described it as "unusual" that "the usually very private Scarlet Johansson is speaking out about her marriage" before the scandal broke, reports that the magazine is distancing itself from the writer responsible for the "interview" by issuing a statement that "We ran these quotes in good faith with the understanding that the interview was carried out with the approval of Ms. Johansson and her publicist. UK Cosmopolitan is taking the complaints by Ms. Johansson's publicist seriously and is investigating the matter further."

This is a very sad affair, but make no mistake: the saddest part of it is what it says about the sorry, uninspired state of irresponsible celebrity journalism. It's especially pitiful given that the British are supposed to lead the league in this kind of thing. Johansson's camp complains that ""Ms. Johansson, who goes to great lengths to preserve an authentic representation of herself with respect to her fans and the media, is disappointed to see a seemingly reputable publication inexplicably publish a work of fiction at her expense." I am disappointed to see a work of fiction about Scarlett Johansson that could give her nothing more startling to say than, "My head is screwed on pretty good. I live a very private and modest lifestyle and I have great friends—who are not actors—and a great family." She was also made to insist that she was relieved that she was able to reel Reynolds in because she was no stranger to "situations... where a guy hasn't been into me." Many will single that out as the closest the "interview" gets to science fiction.) In an age where fanciful journalism has helped to derail presidential campaigns and get wars launched, it's a sorry thing that someone who decided to create her own news about something as unimportant as Scarlett Johansson's speech patterns couldn't come up with something more entertaining than this. (Johansson's publicists have also tried to highlight the absurdity of the post-marital interview by reminding everyone that Johansson did give the British Cosmo an interview--a real one--last summer, and at that time she said, "I hate feeling like I have to share my personal life with anybody. So I'll take the normal celebrity route and just say I'm going to keep my personal life private." So it's not as if the fabulist responsible for the new, fictional interview made her sound any duller than she actually is. But that just points up the fact that concocting a bogus interview with Scarlett Johansson that's dull enough to seem plausible is a pointless, self-defeating act, along the lines of an actor doing a perfectly convincing impersonation of Ben Stein. The next time I read a wholly made-up interview with a movie star in a British publication, I want to see some good stuff about her secret hot affair with Ed Asner and a tearful confession about how she separated herself from her conjoined twin with her own teeth.